The Edge of Never

  ~~~

  The night falls and I’m ready for our night out. I’m wearing a new pair of tight jeans, a sexy black strapless top that hugs my waist and the cutest black heels I’ve ever found in any mall.

  Andrew gawks at me in the doorway.

  “I should play my card right now,” he says coming into the room.

  I’ve braided my hair into two loose braids this time, one resting over each shoulder, stopping just above my breasts. And I always leave a few strands of blonde hair to fall freely about my face because I always thought it was cute on other girls, so why not me?

  Andrew seems to like it. He reaches up and slides each one within his fingers.

  I blush inwardly.

  “Babe, no fucking joke, you are smokin’.”

  “Thanks….” Oh my God, did I just…giggle.

  I look him up and down, too, and although he’s back to jeans and a simple t-shirt and his black Doc Martens, he’s the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen no matter what he’s wearing.

  We head out and I turn a few old guy’s heads in the elevator and down the hall. Andrew is eating the hell out of that, I can tell. He’s beaming walking next to me and it just makes my face beet red.

  We hang out at d.b.a first and watch a band play for about an hour. But when I get carded and it looks like I’m not going to get to drink here, Andrew takes me farther down the street to another bar.

  “It’s a hit or miss,” he says as we approach the bar, hand in hand. “Most of them will card you, but every now and then you get lucky and they don’t bother if you look twenty-one enough.”

  “Well, I’ll be twenty-one in five months,” I say, gripping his hand as we cross a busy intersection.

  “I was worried you were seventeen when I met you on the bus.”

  “Seventeen?!” I hope like hell I don’t actually look that young.

  “Hey,” he says glancing over once, “I’ve seen fifteen-year-olds that look twenty—hard to tell anymore.”

  “So you think I look seventeen?”

  “No, you look about twenty,” he admits, “I’m just sayin’.”

  That’s a relief.

  This bar is slightly smaller than the last and the people in it are a mixture of fresh-out-of-college and early thirty-something’s. A few pool tables are set side by side near the back and the lighting is dim in the place, mostly localized over the pool tables and in the hallway to my right, leading into the restrooms. The cigarette smoke is thick unlike the last place where it was non-existent, but it doesn’t bother me much. I’m not fond of cigarettes, but there’s something natural about cigarette smoke in a bar. It would almost seem naked without it.

  Some kind of familiar rock music is playing from the speakers in the ceiling. There’s a small stage to the left where bands usually play, but no one’s playing tonight. That doesn’t diminish the party-like mood in the atmosphere though, because I can barely hear Andrew talking to me over the music and the shouting voices all around me.

  “Can you play pool?” he leans in, shouting near my ear.

  I shout back, “I have a few times! But I suck at it!”

  He tugs my hand and we walk toward the pool tables and the brighter light, pushing our way carefully through people standing around in just about every available walkable space.

  “Sit here,” he says, able to lower his voice a little with the speakers in front of us. “This’ll be our table.”

  I sit down at a small round table pressed against a wall where just over my head and to my left there is a staircase leading up to a second floor on the other side of me. I nudge the cigarette-laden ashtray across the table and away from me with the tip of my finger as a waitress walks up.

  Andrew is talking to a guy a few feet away next to the pool tables, probably about joining a game.

  “Sorry about that,” the waitress says, taking the ashtray and replacing it with a clean one, setting it upside-down upon the table. She washes the top of the table off afterwards with a wet rag, lifting the ashtray to get the spot under it.

  I smile up at her. She’s a pretty black-haired girl, probably just turned twenty-one herself and she’s holding a serving tray on one hand.

  “Can I get yah anything?”

  I only have one chance to act like I’m asked that question a lot without being carded, so I say almost immediately, “I’ll have a Heineken.”

  “Make that two,” Andrew says stepping back up with a pool stick in his hand.

  The waitress does a double-take when she notices him, and like Andrew in the elevator with me, I’m eating the hell out of it. She nods and glances back down at me with that you-are-one-lucky-bitch look before walking away.

  “That guy’s got one more game and then we’ve got the table,” he says, sitting down on the empty chair.

  The waitress comes back with two Heineken’s and sets them in front of us.

  “Just wave if yah need anything,” she says before leaving again.

  “She didn’t card you,” he says, leaning across the table so no one will hear.

  “No, but that doesn’t mean I won’t eventually get carded—that happened once in a bar in Charlotte; Natalie and me were almost drunk by the time we were carded and sent packing.”

  “Well, then just enjoy it while you can.” He smiles, bringing his beer to his lips and taking a quick drink.

  I do the same.

  I’m starting to wish I hadn’t brought my purse so I wouldn’t have to keep up with it, but when it’s our turn to play a game of pool, I set it on the floor under our table. We’re kind of off in a cubby-hole so I’m not too worried about it.

  Andrew takes me over to the stick rack.

  “What’s your pleasure?” he asks, waving his hands across the space in front of the rack. “You have to pick one that feels right.”

  Oh, this is going to be fun; he actually thinks he’s teaching me something.

  I play coy and clueless, scanning the pool sticks like one might books on a shelf and then take one down. I run my hands along the length of it and hold it out like I would to hit a ball, as if to get the feel of it. I know I look totally dumb-blonde right about now, but that’s exactly how I want to look.

  “This one’s as good as any,” I say with a shrug.

  Andrew racks the balls in the triangular rack, switching solid for stripe all around until he gets the sequence right and then slides them across the table and into position. Carefully, he removes the rack and shoves it in a slot underneath the table.

  He nods. “Want to break em’?”

  “Nah, you can.”

  I just want to see him lookin’ all sexy, concentrating and leaning over the table.

  “Alright,” he says and positions the cue ball. He spends a few seconds twisting the head of his stick into a square of chalk and then sets the chalk on the side of the table.

  “If you’ve played before,” he says, moving back around in position with the cue ball, “then I’m sure you know the basics.” He points the end of the stick at the cue ball. “Obviously, you only hit the white ball.”

  This is funny, but he’s got this one comin’.

  I nod.

  “If you’re stripes, the only balls you want to sink in any pockets are the striped balls—hit one of the solids and you’re only helping me beat you.”

  “What about that black ball?” I point at the 8 ball near the center.

  “If you sink that one before all of your stripes,” he says with a grim face, “you lose. And if you sink the white ball, you lose your turn.”

  “Is that all?” I ask, twisting the head of my stick in a square of chalk now.

  “For now, yeah,” he says; I guess he’s letting me slide about the few other basic rules.

  Andrew takes a couple steps back and leans over the table, arching his fingers on the blue felt and resting the stick strategically within the curl of his index finger. He slides the stick back and forth a couple of times to steady his aim before pausing and then sla
mming the head of it into the cue ball, scattering the others all over the table.

  Good break, baby, I say to myself.

  He sinks two—one stripe, one solid.

  “What’ll it be?” he asks.

  “What’ll what be?” I continue to play dumb.

  “Solids or stripes? I’ll let you choose.”

  “Oh,” I say as if I’m just getting it, “doesn’t matter; I’ll take the ones with stripes, I guess.”

  We’re straying a little from the proper way to play 8 Ball, but I’m pretty sure he’s doing it for my benefit.

  My turn comes and I walk around the table searching for that perfect shot. “Are we calling them, or what?”

  Andrew looks at me curiously—maybe I should’ve said it more like: Do I hit any of my balls that I want? Surely, he’s not onto me already.

  “Just pick any striped ball you think you can sink and go for it.”

  OK, looks like I’m still hustling his clueless butt.

  “Wait, aren’t we going to bet something?” I ask.

  He looks surprised, but then surprise turns to devious.

  “Sure, what do you want to bet?”

  “My freedom back.”

  Andrew frowns. But then his delicious lips turn upward again once he realizes that I apparently don’t know how to play pool.

  “Well, I’m a little hurt you would want it back,” he says, switching the stick back and forth between his hands with one end of it standing against the floor, “but sure, I’ll take that bet.”

  Just when I think the agreement has been made he adds, putting up one finger: “However, if I win, I get to take that do-whatever-I-say to a whole new level.”

  It’s my turn to raise a brow.

  “A whole new level how?” I ask in a leery, sidelong glance.

  Andrew rests his stick against the table and props his hands on the edge, leaning into view of the light. His deep-set grin, just the shear intent behind it, sends a shiver up my back.

  “Is it a bet, or not?” he asks.

  I’m pretty sure I can beat him, but now he kind of has me scared shitless. What if he’s better than me and I lose this bet and end up eating those bugs or hanging my bare ass out of the moving car? Those were the types of things I wanted to keep him from eventually trying to force me to do—I never did forget that he said: we’ll get to that. Sure, I could refuse anything he told me; he assured me of that before we left Wyoming, but not having to go through all that in the first place is all I wanted.

  Or…wait…what if it’s sexual in nature?

  Oh, it’s on now…I almost hope that he does win.

  “It’s a deal.”

  He smiles wickedly and pulls away from the table, taking his stick with him.

  A small group of guys and two girls just finished their game at the table next to ours and a few of them have started watching us.

  I lean over the table, position my stick much the same way Andrew had, slide it back and forth through my fingers a few times and smack the cue ball dead-center. 11 smacks into 15 and 15 smacks into 10, sinking both of them into a corner pocket.

  Andrew just looks at me, his pool stick resting vertically between his fingers in front of him.

  He raises a brow. “Was that beginner’s luck, or am I being hustled?”

  I grin and walk around to the other side of the table to gauge my next shot. I don’t answer. I just smile faintly and keep my eyes on the table. Purposely taking the shot closest to Andrew, I bend over the table in front of him (covertly glancing down to make sure my boobs aren’t in full view of the guys watching directly across from me) and measure my shot before hitting the 9 hard into the side pocket.

  “I’m being hustled,” Andrew says behind me, “and teased.”

  I rise up and skim my grinning eyes across his as I make my way to the end of the table.

  I miss this shot on purpose. The table is set almost perfectly and I might actually be able to pull off an easy win, but I don’t want it to be easy.

  “Ah, hell no, babe,” he says stepping up, “none of that pity-shot bullshit—you could’ve sank the 13 easily.”

  “My finger slipped.” I look at him coyly.

  He shakes his beautiful head at me and narrows his eyes, knowing full-well I’m lying.

  Finally, we just go at it: he sinks three balls flawlessly, one turn after the next, before missing the 7. I sink another one. Then he sinks one. And we do this back and forth, taking our time with each shot, but both of us missing every now and then to keep the game going.

  Now it’s down to business. It’s my turn and the only balls left on the table are his 4, the cue and the 8. The 8 is six inches too far from a perfect corner shot in either direction, but I know I can bank it on one side of the table and let it come back to this side and sink it in the left.

  Two more guys have started watching, no doubt because of the way I’m dressed (I’ve been listening to their quiet comments about my ‘t-n-a’ the whole time, especially when I bend over to take a shot), but I don’t let them distract me. Though, I’ve noticed Andrew’s eyes on them a lot and it excites me that he’s at all jealous.

  I point my stick at the table and call it, “Left pocket.”

  I move around to the side and crouch down at eye-level with the table to see if my lining is off. I stand back up and check the lining of the cue and the 8 again from another perspective and then lean over the table. One. Two. Three. On the forth slide-back, I smack the cue gently and it hits the 8 at just the right angle, sending it against the right side of the table where it bounces back a few inches over and sinks flawlessly into the left pocket.

  The few guys watching on the other side of me make various noises of tamed excitement as if I can’t hear them.

  Andrew is on the other side of the table grinning wide at me.

  “You’re good, babe,” he says racking the balls again. “I guess you’re free now.”

  I can’t help but notice that he seems a little sad about that fact. His face may be smiling, but he can’t hide the disappointment in his eyes.

  “Nah,” I say, “I don’t want that freedom unless it comes to eating bugs or hanging my ass out the car window—I kind of like you being in control of the rest.”

  Andrew smiles.

  24

  WE PLAY ANOTHER GAME, which he wins fairly, and afterwards I decide to sit back down at our table before these new shoes start rubbing blisters on my feet. I’m on my second Heineken and still am only feeling it in my toes and the bottom of my stomach. It’ll take another one to get me a good buzz.

  “Want a game, man?” a guy asks stepping up to Andrew just as he starts to sit down with me.

  Andrew looks over and I wave him on.

  “Go on, I’m fine—gonna check my messages and rest my feet for a while.”

  “Alright, babe,” he says, “just let me know if you’re ready to go before I’m done and we’ll go.”

  “I’m good,” I say, urging him, “go on and play.”

  He smiles in at me and walks back over to the table not more than fifteen feet away. I get my purse from underneath the table and set it in front of me, rummaging inside in search of my phone.

  Just as I suspected: Natalie has blown my phone up with text messages, sixteen in all, but at least she hasn’t tried to call. My mom hasn’t called, either, but I remember she was going on that cruise with her new boyfriend this weekend. I hope she’s having a great time. I hope she’s having as great of a time as I am.

  A new song starts funneling through the speakers in the ceiling and I notice the amount of people inside the bar have tripled since we got here. Even though Andrew isn’t that far away, I can only see his lips moving when he says anything to the guy he’s shooting pool with. The waitress comes back and I ask for another beer and she goes off to get it, leaving me to the Text Message Queen. Natalie and I go back and forth a few times about what she did today and where she’s going tonight, but I know it’s all just filler-co
nversation, taking place of what she’s dying to know more about: me in New Orleans with this ‘mystery guy’, who he looks like (not ‘what’ because she always compares guys to famous people) and if I’ve ‘bent over for him’ yet. I keep everything vague just to torture her. She still deserves it, after all. Besides, I’m still not ready to go into Andrew with her. Not with anyone, really. It’s like if I talk about him at all, even just to confirm he exists and that I’m with him, that this whole experience will go up in a puff of smoke. I’ll jinx it. Or, I’ll wake up and realize that Blake slipped something in one of the drinks he served me that night before I went out onto the roof with him and I’ve just been hallucinating this entire road trip with Andrew.

  “I’m Mitchell,” a voice says above me, accompanied by a strong waft of whiskey and cheap men’s cologne.

  The guy is of average build, the buff-but-not-too-buff kind. His eyes are bloodshot like the blond-haired guy standing next to him.

  I smile back squeamishly and glance at Andrew who is already walking this way.

  “I’m with someone,” I say gently.

  The buff guy looks at the other chair and then back at me as if to make note of how empty it is.

  “Camryn?” Andrew says standing behind them. “Are you alright?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine,” I say.

  The buff guy turns at the waist to see Andrew.

  “She said she’s fine,” he says and I hear the challenge in his voice.

  I didn’t mean ‘I’m fine, leave me alone, Andrew’ and Andrew knows as much, but these guys apparently do not.

  “She’s with me,” Andrew says, trying to remain calm, though probably only for my sake—he already has that unmistakable look of aggression in his eyes.

  The blond guy laughs.

  The buff guy looks at me again, a bottle of Budweiser in one hand. “Is he your boyfriend or something?”

  “No, but we’re—”

  The buff guy smiles tauntingly and looks back at Andrew, cutting me off. “You’re not her boyfriend, so back off, man.”